Path of Exile: Betrayal – New Master Content, Atlas Objectives, Focus Modifiers

The upcoming Betrayal expansion for Grinding Gear Games’ action-RPG Path of Exile will introduce a new roster of Forsaken Masters, most of them previously featured as key NPCs during the game’s earlier challenge leagues. This post on the game’s website explains how that will work. Have a look:

With the upcoming launch of Path of Exile’s Betrayal expansion, the roster of Masters is changing. The old cohort of Forsaken Masters mysteriously vanished. In their absence, Einhar, Alva, and Niko have joined Jun and Zana as a new group of Masters to aid you. Today’s post covers how their league content has been integrated into the core game.

Einhar, BeastMaster

Einhar has returned, as a Master, and you will meet him from Act Two onwards. His missions involve hunting the area for one red beast and some yellow beasts. When you do enough damage to a beast, Einhar will appear to assist you with the hunt. He handles the process of capturing beasts himself, so you don’t need to worry about managing nets. He will remain in the area until the last yellow or red beast is captured.

His missions aren’t the only thing made simpler – so is Beastcrafting. Each recipe generally involves a specific Red Beast and a number of non-specific Yellow Beasts. There are some recipes which only require Yellow Beasts. You will need to defeat the beasts at the Blood Altar in the Menagerie to perform the recipe.

As mentioned in the Hideout FAQ, masters have account-wide favour levels which determine which hideout decorations are available for purchase. Einhar’s favour level is proportional to how much of the Bestiary you have completed. You will need to capture one of every beast to fully level Einhar. Remember, this is now account-wide, so once your Bestiary has been completed, you will not need to repeat it every league.

Niko, Master of the Depths

Niko and the Azurite Mine will appear from Act Four onwards, after you have unsealed The Mines. Delve otherwise remains largely unchanged from 3.4.0. When an area contains Sulphite, it will contain considerably more Sulphite to make up for it not being in every area. Our intention is that while there is less access to the Azurite Mine than there was when Delve was the only league running, we still want players to be able to access it more often than other cases where we have merged league content into the core game. Note that you can use Sextants and trade for Prophecies or Scarabs to run Delve more frequently, though the cost of this will be at the whim of the economy.

Niko’s favour level is based on the deepest depth you have delved to in any league.

Alva, Master Explorer

Alva can be encountered from Act Seven onwards. When you find her, she will open up to three consecutive Incursion portals. She only opens fewer than three if you need fewer than three to complete the current Temple.

Alva’s level is proportional to the number of different Temple rooms you have explored. She will be maximum level once you have explored every type of Temple room in the present-day version. Exploring a high-tier room will also count as exploring any lower tier versions of that same room.

Our intention is to count your progress in the old Bestiary and Delve leagues towards your account-wide Einhar and Niko favour levels. Unfortunately, we cannot transfer past progress from the Incursion league, because we did not track what rooms you had encountered, so you will need to earn Alva’s favour from scratch (though you will only need to do this once, as favour levels are account-wide).

Bestiary, Incursion and Delve represent a vast amount of content that took most of 2018 to create. We are greatly looking forward to introducing it to the core game with Betrayal and having a chance to revisit some of our favourite characters and experiences with you.

And then, you can check out this post that talks about the new Atlas Objectives that will be replacing the daily master missions in Betrayal:

Throughout Path of Exile: Betrayal, you can encounter Masters from the new roster randomly in areas you explore. Einhar, Alva and Niko’s content and where they are introduced was explained in this previous post.

Once you reach endgame maps, there’s a one-third chance of getting a random Master in each map, from the set of Einhar, Alva, Niko and Zana. Jun is in every area in Betrayal league, throughout the main game and endgame.

To replace daily missions, we have added a new system called Atlas Objectives. These are markers on the Atlas of Worlds that show that a specific Master is in that map and available to do a mission with you. These repopulate every day just like daily missions did before.

In addition to encountering masters randomly and having Atlas Objectives appear each day, the Atlas Objectives also have a chance to be generated when you complete a map. Note, if an Atlas Objective is added for a specific Master and you still have an uncompleted one for that Master on your Atlas, then the existing one is moved to the new location.

The map tier that Atlas Objectives spawn at is loosely based on the last map you have run in the league.

This Atlas Objectives system is designed to reward both players who consistently play every day, but also players who just play a lot of Path of Exile. When combined with other ways of encountering Master content (such as Prophecies, Sextants and Scarabs), you’ll have lots of opportunities to heavily engage in Bestiary, Incursion, Delve and Zana content if you want to!

Finally, you can peep this post to learn about the new Focus skill and its Veiled modifiers.